The NYT article by Jon Gertner describes Harvard professor David Keith’s proposal of a continuous “solar engineering” project to slow down global warming, at a cost of $1 billion a year, by flying ten Gulfstream jets around the world, spraying 25,000 tons of liquid sulphur gas. The gas will condense into airborne particles that scatter sunlight and so reduce global warming. Keith argues such a project is technologically feasible, but is concerned, as he puts it, about “the ethics about messing with nature.”

What neither Keith nor reporter Gertner seems to know (or pretend they don’t know) is that the U.S. government has been engaged in “tinkering with the environment” or weather modification since 1953, as revealed in a recently uncovered 784-page U.S. Senate report, Weather Modification: Programs, Problems, Policy, and Potential(U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington: May 1978).

Here are some highlights from that report:

(1) The U.S. government has been doing weather modification since 1953 (p. v of Weather Modification):

In a letter addressed to Dr. Norman A. Beckman, Acting Director, Congressional Research Service of the Library of Congress, Sen. James B. Pearson wrote: “weather modification projects have been operational for nearly 25 years and have been shown to have significant potential for preventing, diverting, moderating, or ameliorating the adverse effects of such weather related disasters and hazards”. Pearson’s “greatest concern” is “regarding the lack of a coordinated Federal weather modification policy and a coordinated and comprehensive program for weather modification research and development.” It is that concern that prompted Sen. Pearson to ask the Congressional Research Service to prepare the Weather Modification: Programs, Problems, Policy, and Potential report.

Note: James Pearson was a U.S. senator (R-Kansas) from 1962 to 1978. He introduced and sponsored senate bill S.3383 “National Weather Modification Policy Act”. Written into Public Law 94-490 on October 13, 1976, S.3383 authorized a member of the cabinet to “negotiate an International agreement concerning the peaceful uses of weather modification”.

“Weather modification is generally considered to be the deliberate effort to improve atmospheric conditions for beneficial human purposes—to augment water supplies through enhanced precipitation or to reduce economic losses, property damages, and deaths through mitigation of adverse effects of hail, lightning, fog, and severe storms.”

The modern period in weather modification began in 1946 with cloud seeding using dry ice, then silver iodide.

Beginning in the 1950s, there were projects to alter severe storm effects. Commercial weather modifiers also began.

By 1978 when the Senate report was published, weather modification included cold fog clearing; “primitive” efforts to abate severe storms and hurricanes; increase winter snowpack by seeding clouds in the mountains on the U.S. west coast and in Israel to enhance precipitation by as much as 15% over “natural” rainfall; opening holes (via seeding) in wintertime cloud layers in northeast U.S. so as to increase sunshine and decrease energy consumption; and experiments to suppress lightning by seeding thunderstorms.

(4) U.S. government involvement in weather modification (from “Summary and Conclusions,” pp. xxi-xxvi):

“For over 30 years both legislative and executive branches of the Federal Government have been involved in a number of aspects of weather modification.”

Since 1947, more than 110 weather modification bills and resolutions have been introduced in Congress — for research support, operations, grants, policy studies, regulations, liabilities, activity reporting, international concerns, and using weather modification as a weapon. Some of the bills became laws.

Total funding for Federal weather modification research reached a high point of $20 million in fiscal year 1976, falling to $17 million in fiscal year 1978.

While each federal government agency conducts its own weather modification research, the National Science Foundation is the lead agency. The NSF and the Departments of Interior and Commerce account for the largest weather modification programs.

State governments, universities, private institutions and commercial entities (e.g., airlines) also conduct their own weather modification projects, mostly to increase precipitation, suppression of hail or dispersal of fog.

“Modification processes may also be initiated or triggered inadvertently rather than purposefully, and the possibility exists that society may be changing the climate through its own actions by pushing on certain leverage points. Inadvertently, man is already causing measurable variations on the local scale. Artificial climatic effects have been observed and documented on local and regional scales, particularly in and downwind of heavily populated industrial areas where waste heat, particulate pollution and altered ground surface characteristics are primarily responsible for the perceived climate modification. The climate in and near large cities, for example, is warmer, the daily range of temperature is less, and annual precipitation is greater than if the cities had never been built. Although not verifiable at present, the time may not be far off when human activities will result in measurable large-scale changes in weather and climate of more than passing significance. It is important to appreciate the fact that the role of man at this global level is still controversial, and existing models of the general circulation are not yet capable of testing the effects in a conclusive manner. Nevertheless, a growing fraction of current evidence does point to the possibility of unprecedented impact on the global climate by human activities ….”

“Weather modification is often controversial, and both formal and informal opposition groups have been organized in various sections of the country. Reasons for such opposition are varied and are based on both real and perceived adverse consequences from weather modification. Sometimes with little or no rational basis there are charges by these groups that otherwise unexplained and usually unpleasant weather-related events are linked to cloud seeding. There are also cases where some farmers are economically disadvantaged through receiving more, or less than optimum rainfall for their particular crops, when artificial inducement of such conditions may have indeed been planned to benefit those growing different crops with different moisture requirements.“

(8) Weather modification as a weapon of war (from “Summary and Conclusions,” pp. xix, xxviii):

“Not all weather modification activities, however, have been or can be designed to benefit everyone, and some intentional operations have been used, or are perceived to have been used, as a weapon of war to impede the mobility or tactical readiness of an enemy.”

The U.S. used weather modification as a weapon of war in Vietnam: “attempts were made to impede traffic by increasing rainfall during the monsoon season.”

Expect weather warfare between nations in the future.

There have been international efforts to ensure peaceful use of weather modification.

“Because atmospheric processes operate independent of national borders, weather modification is inherently of international concern…. Whereas domestic weather modification law is confused

and unsettled, international law in this area is barely in the formative stage. In time, ramifications of weather modification may lead to major international controversy.“

“Economically significant weather modification activities will have an eventual ecological effect, though appearance of that effect may be hidden or delayed…. Deliberate weather modification, such as precipitation augmentation, is likely to have a greater ecological impact in semi-arid regions than in humid ones.”

Dane Wigington of GeoengineeringWatch.org asks:

How big does the climate engineering elephant in the room need to be before it can no longer be hidden in plain site? How much more historical proof do we need of the ongoing climate engineering/weather warfare before the denial of the masses crumbles? When will populations around the globe bring to justice all those responsible for the ongoing and rapidly worsening worldwide weather warfare assault?

And so, the next time you’re mocked and called a “conspiracy theorist” because you bring up chemtrails or HAARP or California’s peculiar historic 100-year drought, show them this post. They are the ones in denial, not us.

16 comments

There are literally hundreds of agencies and departments in this report that we should drop a note to demanding they stop spraying us, our children, animals, food crops, all plant life, our oceans and fresh water ways.
Also, it would be good to have this PDF circulated on all our college campuses. We already have too many useful idiots.

You’re one of the few who suffer from a case of pathological denial based on fear of insanity akin to Stockholm syndrome. Your mind refuses to process overwhelming empirical evidence like the aerosols leaking from the cargo bay.